Sony Xperia Z1: the 10 best apps to download first

Just bought a Sony Xperia Z1? Lucky you – as our review points out, it’s a stonker of a smartphone with a fantastic camera and one of the most life-proof builds in mobile. Here are ten ideal apps (eight of them free) to get you started.

Adobe Photoshop Express (Free)

Adobe Photoshop Express (Free)

Photoshop on mobile may lack its desktop brother’s ubiquity and do-it-all complexity, but it’s still a fine image-editing app – and free to boot.

Snaps taken with the Z1’s camera can be cropped, straightened, rotated and flipped, and adjusted via slider for parameters like colour, contrast, clarity and tint. Alternatively, just tap the auto-fix button and the app will tweak everything using its own algorithms.

There are also over 20 filters to apply, and the ability to share photos directly to all the usual social media suspects.

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Flickr (Free)

Flickr (Free)

Photo sharing service Flickr has been around for eons (in internet terms at least) and over the past couple of years flirted with fading into near-obscurity – but owner Yahoo! recently gave it a much-needed shot in the arm by handing every user a free terabyte of storage space.

The mobile layout is much improved too, with a cleaner look and the ability to watch slideshows of your (or anyone else’s) shots, or simply swipe through them.

Super Stickman Golf 2 (Free)

A simple but maddeningly addictive casual game in which you play increasingly outlandish holes of 2D golf. It’s a little like Worms, a little like Angry Birds and not very much like actual golf (more fun, if you ask us).

MapMyHike (Free)

The Xperia Z1 is tougher than 99 percent of its rivals – one of the few flagship smartphone models you could take out on a hike and not have to clad in some kind of watertight kevlar case.

This app, from the makers of MapMyRun, is designed for hikers and thus tracks time, distance and elevation as you yomp through the wilderness. And because it plots accurate maps of your routes, it’s a great way to remember the best ones for next time.